London, 1 August 1914
The Packet
A new expedition every season, posted to you in three monthly dispatches, in the explorers’ own words.
Founding offer15% off your first dispatch for the first 20 subscribers, until 15 December. It comes off automatically at checkout.
Dispatch I: Into the ice
London to the Weddell Sea, August 1914 to October 1915
The ship sails from London as Britain goes to war, calls at Buenos Aires and the whaling station at South Georgia, and turns south into the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, making for the coast where Shackleton means to land.
On the far side of the continent, a second ship, the Aurora, lands the Ross Sea party, who are to lay supplies for Shackleton’s crossing.
Dispatch II follows in December, and Dispatch III in January.
Everyone sets out together
Everyone sails on the same voyage at the same time. The first dispatch leaves London in August 1914 and reaches your doormat at the end of November 2026. Over three months you follow the expedition south, as it happened, in the words of the men who were there.
Each dispatch brings the next stage of the story, and the chart grows panel by panel until the third completes the voyage.
In each dispatch
The ship’s letter
Eight pages on cream laid paper, set like a letter: that stage of the journey in Shackleton’s own words, with every cut marked.
The other ship’s letter
Four pages from the far side of the continent: the Ross Sea party, told largely in their own diaries.
The chart panel
A card panel showing the route so far. Keep them together and the chart grows until the third panel completes the voyage.
The notes slip
A smaller slip in our own voice: what was happening elsewhere that month, what they got wrong, and what comes next.
A new expedition every season
When one voyage ends, the next sets out.
Every voyage runs for three dispatches, one a month. When the Endurance story is over, The Packet sails on with another expedition, from the age of discovery to the race for the Poles, and your subscription carries on into it.
You help choose where we go next. The second dispatch of every voyage carries a vote on the next one, and the third announces the crew’s choice.
In his own words
“A year and a half later we were to learn that the Harpoon, the steamer which tends the Grytviken station, had arrived with mail for us not more than two hours after the Endurance had proceeded down the coast.”
Ernest Shackleton, South (1919). South Georgia, 5 December 1914: the last mail missed them by two hours.
Give it as a gift
An expedition that arrives by post.
For anyone who reads about explorers, loses hours in old maps or wishes they’d been there: each month, a letter from the ice through their letterbox.
Put their address at checkout. Use your own email and card, and their name and address under Delivery address. Sending it abroad? Switch to posting outside the UK at the top of the checkout.
Give as many months as you like. When you want the gift to end, cancel in Manage your subscription. No more payments are taken, and they still get any dispatch you’ve paid for.
For Christmas: subscribe by 20 November and they start at the beginning, with Dispatch I posted in the last week of November. Subscribe by 20 December and their first dispatch, Dispatch II, is posted in the week after Christmas.
More ideas: gifts for history lovers.
Subscribe
The Packet, posted to you each month
- US$10 a month, postage included.
- Founding offer: 15% off your first dispatch for the first 20 subscribers, until 15 December. It comes off automatically at checkout.
- You pay when you subscribe, then on the same date each month.
- Dispatches post in the last week of each month. Subscribe by the 20th to get that month’s dispatch.
- Join in any month: you start with the next dispatch, and carry on into the next voyage when one ends.
- Cancel any time in your account. No more payments are taken, and you still get any dispatch you’ve paid for.
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